STAGE MY FAIR LADY
★★★
The London Coliseum until August 27, eno.org
London’s first revival of the Lerner and Loewe musical for 21 years hit headlines with the first black Eliza Doolittle.
Frankly, the only thing anyone should be talking about is how magnificent Amara Okereke is. She snarls and roars as the Cockney flower seller desperate to improve herself, while beautifully trilling Wouldn’t It Be Loverly or I Could Have Danced All Night on the bumpy road to rounded vowels. Her final transformation is magnificent and rather moving.
This Broadway transfer includes its leading man Harry Hadden-Paton. Best known as Lady Edith’s chap on Downton Abbey, he brings a similar emotionally constipated, bumbling sweetness to linguist Professor Henry Higgins.
It makes a nice change from Rex Harrison’s unapologetically alpha snob in the 1964 film.
The plot has always been problematic with two posh older chaps patronisingly Pygmalioning a young working-class girl for their own amusement, merrily insulting her ‘deliciously low’ class and ignoring her feelings. It’s softened here by the affection both begin to feel for her, and a radically revised ending is beautifully and sensitively handled by the two leads. It was the absolute highlight of the show.
The entire cast is strong, from Vanessa Redgrave’s feisty Mrs Higgins joyously celebrating Eliza’s final triumphs to Malcolm Sinclair’s delightful
Colonel Pickering and Sharif Affifi’s puppyish (and golden-voiced) Freddy Eynsford-Hill.
Yet, with so much to enjoy, it’s all a little too stately, gliding elegantly along like a swan – you admire it but it rarely makes a splash.
The echoing auditorium doesn’t help. Like the excellent work of the ENO orchestra on the sumptuous score, unfortunately it all gets a little lost in the cavernous Coliseum.
Higgins’ study is a handsomely galleried splendour of polished wood and leather in a life-size dollhouse, rotating to reveal the entrance hall, bathroom and patio. But other sets underwhelm, two-dimensional frontings popping down and up like cardboard cut-outs. And the costumes are the highest quality but too tasteful to dazzle.
Nothing truly leaps off the stage, rattles the rafters or stirs our hearts.
Though undeniably “loverly”, it didn’t leave me feeling I could dance all night.